The sky was an ocean, clouds of foam washing against the mountains.
The sun was a golden drop of honey, casting light upon the emerald grass.
A pond lay still in the field of green, motionless and peaceful.
Calm was the water, and silent was the breeze.

One day when the sun was barely peeking over the mountains and the field was full of an early mist, the wind carried a single drop of water to the center of the emerald meadow.
The droplet fell into the grass and sunk deep into the earth.
For days of sun and nights of moonlight, the water and soil bonded to create roots.
The roots grew stronger by each morning, until one day a bit of a stem rose from the ground.
Hidden by the tall grass, it was still unseen.
The sun nor the moon could see what was slowly growing just before their gaze.
While the sky changed colors countlessly and the mountains woke again and again, something was slowly rising from the grass.

Soon it grew taller than the emerald field, and indeed the sun and moon did see it.
They awed over the astonishing beauty of the small flower.
A body of green and a head of white, the flower stood proud in the center of the meadow.

As the sun was retiring and the moon was beginning to cast its eerie light, the clouds grew violent and a storm arose.
The sky was dark and rain fell.
The grass swayed in the crying wind but the flower did not wilt.
It held still, its roots in fact digging deeper into the earth.

The next dawn was quiet and dreary.
The sun was dimmer, the grass was duller, the pond was still resting, and even the mountains looked asleep.
The white flower was seemingly untouched and even more bright than it was prior the storm, morning dew resting on its delicate petals.

Later the same day, a soft wind came.
Though it was a small gust, it unexpectedly swept right under the flower and pulled it from the ground.
It was carried with the breeze and dropped gracefully into the pond.
It drifted down the river, floating peacefully in the blue water.
Then a current pulled it down, and the flower swirled down to the bottom of the pond, never to be seen by the sun or the moon again.


Many sunrises later, a drop of water was carried by the wind to the center of the field.
When it fell to the earth, it sunk into the soil and felt the familiar roots of a flower.
The water built upon the roots and eventually, in the field stood a single flower.

Dear people I love,
I'm sorry I let out my stress on you.
(Because often it's the people you're closest to who get hurt the most when you're angry at everything but them.)
I'm sorry you have to deal with my uptight, stress-case, mess of a personality.
(Because some things bring out the worst side in you, a side you wish nobody had to see. A side hidden beneath smiles and laughs and true happiness. The side that's all your fault.)
Sorry. Sorry. Sorry. Sorry. Sorry.
(One sorry for the people you didn't mean to hurt.)
(One sorry for the air which absorbed your negative energy.)
(One sorry for your palms which have been dug into far too many times.)
(One sorry for your eyes which have cried too many frustrated tears.)
(And one last sorry for you. I'm sorry you have to feel this way, that you think it's all your fault.)
(But that doesn't mean there's nothing you can do to change it.)
-I. Quill

My heart feels tight and fast and anxious,
When things are out of my control.
I feel a need to grasp at anything I can,
For when there is no sense of stability or familiarity or predictability,
I feel like everything around me will shatter into a million pieces.
Including me.

*

Maybe it's because I've had to take on this role my whole life,
This role of taking care of everything. Planning, being on time, making sure things line up.
This role that has been the cause of my stress.
Or perhaps it's because things have happened, in my past, that I had no control over.
And now I'm frantically reaching for something, anything, that I can control.

Why can't you love me no matter what.
Why do I have to live my life tiptoeing over everything I do so I don't disappoint you.
Well guess what, you're already disappointed in me. Disappointed that I'm not who you want me to be, that I don't believe what you want me to believe. Disappointed that I can never seem to do anything right, because it will never live up to what will make you happy.
Perhaps you don't even realize the pain and pressure I feel, but I feel it. And it's real.
Those words, "I'm not mad. Just disappointed."
Those words hurt worse than you think...

The gears in my mind that used to wind and turn so fast, are slowing. The ideas that never become words, die off. The tick-tick-ticking of pestering thoughts give up. And urge me to give up as well.
Why can't I process this train of endless emotions that long to
become stories? There once was a place in my mind that filled and
toppled over with wonderful ideas. But that place is now empty,
full of cobwebs and dust. Lost, buried deep inside me.
  How can I find it again? That place I'd go when the world shut me
  out and I just needed to express how I felt.
   I miss the days I'd feel lonely, and escape to the world of wonder
   I'd get lost in. The words, the powerful language... And I'd create
   something spectacular.
    But that gift was taken from me, ripped from my heart leaving an
    empty feeling in my chest.
     My power of writing unique ideas is gone.
      How do I get it back? Can I?
      I'm too weak. I can't search for those ideas. I'll never find them
      again.
      I let those brilliant thoughts slip from my grasp. They drifted
      away, soon to wither to dust.
     I am incapable of writing. Incapable of thinking. Incapable of
     loving what I write.
     So I may be unable to find those old words, but I can create new
     ones. It'll take effort, it'll take time. It'll take practice.
    But I am willing, to get my thoughts whirling again. To take an
    emotion, put it into words, and form those words into something
    beautiful. I'll sort my language for only the best, the most poetic.
   My feelings in the writing will swirl up from the pages and enter
   your mind and make you think, Wow... Who wrote this?
  But I am incapable of such a gift... I always have been.
So I'll drown in the dread I've made for myself. I'll swallow the
water of hopelessness as I sink deeper and deeper and deeper... I'm
incapable.
But at least I could make a poem out of it.

Is this how I die?
Walking mindlessly, with fury pulsing in my veins, clouding every instinct, every flicker of logic or reason.
Only the sounds of my footsteps, the cracking of sticks beneath my feet.
Voices from every direction, and when I try to follow them, they go away.
I try to walk in a single direction, but every side of me looks the same—grass, trees, mountains, sky.
And somehow I've walked in a perfect circle, even more lost than before.
Getting deeper and deeper into the unknown, thinking only of the reason that brought me out here in the first place.
And soon, the reason has escaped my mind altogether.
And I am left feeling empty, confused, raw.
My heart pounding in my chest as I look around, completely lost and alone.
All because I let my horrible emotions take the reigns, walking me right into a trap.
A trap at my own hands, all my fault.
Tell me again, is this how I die?

The streets were bare and the moon was out.
Stars shined in the blackness of night, and the little girl held a candle.
A dull candle, with no fire giving it burning life.  
Her hands trembling in the cold, every breath she inhaled a wave of ice.
Her lungs straining to keep up the rhythm.
In, out. In, out.
Her hands shaking, her body trembling with fear of the great darkness.
Memories of the warmth she once felt tore her heart.
A bright fire once flickered on the wick of the candle, but the flame vanished in the wind.
The howling wind that came that night ripped the life from the candle.
And left the little girl to shiver in the cold, all alone.
Her eyes pleaded to all that walked by for a flame.
The warmth they felt stirred jealousy in her heart as she thought of the fireless candle.
A candle was all she had.
And without warmth, soon enough she would freeze.
Her eyes already drifting shut, her grip on the candle weakening, her heartbeat growing slower.
And people would shuffle past her and gasp, but continue on.
Nobody would help the poor little child that was dying in the cold.
For all she had was a candle.
And what's a candle without a flame?